Sony's New Controversial DRM

• Mark Russinovich has discovered a new Windows-based Digital Rights Management scheme (DRM) in Sony's release of Van Zant's "Get With The Man" CD. The DRM scheme is what Russinovich calls a Rootkit, which "has several characteristics: it finds its way onto systems uninvited; endeavors to remain undetected; and then may either intercept system library routines and reroute them to its own routines, or replace system executables with its own, or both - all with the intention of gaining system level ownership of the computer." Unfortunately, attempting to remove this DRM scheme/rootkit also leads to Windows being unusable.

  The Register has a story summarizing the situation. Meanwhile, Tim Lee is asking what consequences this type of DRM poses for the definition of circumvention in the DMCA provisions of the Copyright act.